by Tim Billbrough
Introduction
With an unusually large burst of Awen this past January, though, I set upon a quest to feast the Wheel of the Year with a special food item for each of the eight festivals. In these dishes, I try to capture the spirit of the specific festival, my own native land, and the ancient Celtic culture we derive from.
I do not hold these dishes as special in and of themselves, but I try to make them special through the consideration, intent, and symbolism that goes into choosing what to make and the ingredients that go into it.
I have four rules that I try my best to follow in pursuit of this goal:
1. The dish must represent the festival in question, its themes and what we revere about it. This is how I honor the festival.
2. I must use only ingredients I grow myself/can source locally, or are native to my home in New Hampshire, USA. When I can do both, that is preferred. This is how I honor the land I live and practice on.
3. The ingredients must be seasonal to my own land, either through ripeness or appropriate preservation. My climate is slightly different than that of the Celtic Isles, so this is how I honor the Wheel of the Year itself.
4. The dish must be an interpretation of what our Celtic ancestors would have eaten around the time of festival. This is how I honor our Druid traditions.
Using these rules, I seek to channel my own self into my cooking and seek deeper connection between myself, my practice, and my land.
Symbolizing Lughnasadh
Lughnasadh is one of my favorite festivals. To me, the solstices carry weight and tradition while the equinoxes bear more reflection and introspection, but the fire festivals are times to let loose and celebrate the seasons. Lughnasadh is a time for celebrating the fruits of our labor, in some cases literally. It is the time of plenty, the beginning of the harvest and, necessarily, I feel, is also the time for the giving of thanks.
As an American, Thanksgiving is probably our most culturally significant holiday and occurs at the end of the harvest season, in late November. But as a Druid, I wish to give thanks for bounties at all points of the year. Traditionally, this is done with the baking, and sometimes the offering, of bread, celebrating the grains that form the staple of our ancestor’s diets (and at least mine as well!).
Lughnasadh is also a time for letting go and for celebrating the skilled works of tradespeople and artists. It is a time where we not only celebrate the work we’ve done to get bounty from the land, but a time to share what our personal talents can bring our communities as well. Sounds like the perfect festival to apply my love and talent of and in food to celebrate with everyone.
What to Make
With its focus on grains, one might think it would be difficult for me to find something fitting to bring to this celebration, considering none of the traditional bread making grains are native to my area. Not wheat, nor barley, nor oats. But, in fact, the qualities of this festival have made it one of the easiest to find a suitable dish for. For it, I turn to my childhood and a dish that has pervaded New England since the native tribes of the area taught it to the earliest of colonials: succotash.
If you’ve only heard of succotash from Sylvester the Cat, don’t worry, it is a traditional dish of the Native Americans of the northeast, comprising of the Three Sisters: corn, beans, and squash. Variations have followed the Native Americans across the continent and now most rural areas of the country have a version of it. The one my grandmother used to make used milk, a family adaptation based on three centuries of New England dairy farming.
But succotash is the perfect dish for Lughnasadh. Not only is one of the central ingredients the major grain native to my area, corn or maize, but by utilizing the other two sisters as well, it is a dish that represents the community that the three plants have, coming together to make a meal where each sister contributes their own talents and tastes.
I’ve talked about the three sisters before, but I do not believe I have gone into detail. If I have, please excuse this brief recap. The three sisters are corn, beans, and squash, and they represented the main agricultural efforts of many Native American tribes and confederations. The term itself is a translation of Iroquois, but the Cherokee and Wampanoag, the tribe native to my area, used it as well. Corn would be planted first and allowed to get a head start. She is the oldest sister. Then beans would be planted at the base of the corn stalk and allowed to use it as a trellis. She is the middle sister, and though she climbs on her older sister, she strengthens the soil by, as we now know, adding nitrogen to it. Finally, Squash is planted around both. She is the youngest sister and the fastest growing and she uses her broad leaves to shade the soil, retaining water and smothering weeds. Working in this harmony, all three plants strengthen each other and grow better for it.
Hopefully you can now see why I easily thought of succotash as the perfect dish to represent Lughnasadh. It is one that celebrates grain, yes, but also the community that
goes into growing the grain, combining many talents into one. Of course, since I don’t have a cow and they are not native to my area, I will be leaving out the milk in this version, making a more traditional succotash.
Making Succotash
This is an incredibly easy dish. For this, I am using sweet corn, a zucchini (called in the UK a green courgette), and butter beans, which I shelled and par-boiled before beginning this recipe. You can use whatever mix of corn, beans, and squash you like. In the winter, it is often made with dent corn and pumpkin or other winter squash, and in the summer I have also made it with green beans. These are what I had on hand in my garden, so these are what I am using.
To start, you’ll want to cut up your zucchini (courgetti) into bite sized pieces. Then, you’ll want to cut the corn kernels off the cob. The safest way to do so would be to cut the end of the cob off to make it flat, and them place it on an overturned ramekin in a large bowl or saucer. Holding it steady, use a sharp knife to slice a large row of kernels off and let them fall into the larger dish. I have included a photo of this. Then you’ll want to get your beans ready, making sure they will cook in a short amount of time in a frying pan (hence why I par-boiled mine).
A note on fat: butter and the various oils I generally use day-to-day are not native to my area, so I couldn’t use them for this effort. Traditionally, Native Americans from my area would render bear fat into tallow and use that throughout the year. Bear fat is rather near impossible to find, nowadays, though, so I am using duck fat, which would have also been available. Use whatever fat you wish.
Once your Mise is En Place, get a small amount of the fat of your choice into a frying pan. Then simply add the igridients in the order that they will take time to cook, starting with whatever will take the longest. In my case, I started with the zucchini (courgetti) and beans at the same time. Once they started to take on some color, I added the corn and some salt. I continued frying and stirring until everything was tender and had some good browning. Then simply put into a bowl and it’s time to enjoy!
Needless to say I enjoyed the dish. I grew up eating succotash and still make it occasionally now. While eating it dry and fried, rather than simmered in milk, is a new experience, I have to say it was quite good and something I might ad to my regular rotation just to mix things up. I’m always looking for ways to make veggies taste good.
From a culinary perspective, I think this could have benefited from some onion mixed in as well as a few herbs. All of which I grow and could have added by my rules for this journey. However, from a spiritual perspective, I purposefully omitted them because I wanted the
three sisters to shine in their community together, to better symbolize the dish and for the purposes of making a festival-specific celebratory dish, I believe that I made the correct decision. Though I think I could have doubled up on the sweet corn, both for flavor and to emphasize the celebration of grain in Lughnasadh. So I would recommend doing that.
Conclusion
Succotash has been, in my opinion, the perfect dish to symbolize and celebrate Lughnasadh, at least for my area. I think I have belabored the reasons why too much already. Instead, I would love to hear what you think it might be in your area!
Recipe
Ingredients
Two cobs of sweet corn, raw
About 8 oz (half pound; 227 grams) of fresh beans of your choice, either quick cooking or par-boiled
Summer squash of your choice
Fat of your choice
Salt to taste
Method
Shell and par-boil your beans if needed. This is simple boiling them in water for 3-5 minutes.
Set a ramekin upside down in a larger shallow bowl or dish. Cut the ends off each corn cob so they stand flat. Working with one cob at a time, place it flat side down on the ramekin and use a sharp knife to slice the kernels off the cob and into the dish below. Repeat with the other cob.
In a medium frying pan, add the fat. When it melts, add the ingredients in the order of hardness, starting with the hardest first, probably the squash. Then add the salt and the rest of the ingredients in order, stirring constantly until everything is tender and has taken on a golden-brown char.
Serve and enjoy!
